


between two centuries

by boleynqueens



Series: Whitehall Verse [1]
Category: 15th Century CE RPF, The White Princess (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-18 11:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12386748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boleynqueens/pseuds/boleynqueens
Summary: prequel to 'whitehall university'modern au of henry vii and elizabeth of york.in the year 1990, elizabeth york is tired of being notorious and henry tudor wishes to be. what will happen when the two meet?





	1. believe

**Author's Note:**

> "You think you know a story, but you only know how it ends. To get to the heart of the story, you have to go back to the beginning." -- _The Tudors_ pilot, 'In Cold Blood': 2007

_**February, 1990** _

 

Elizabeth pages through the sketchbook on her lap, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand.

She is her own worst critic, and art is not something that she feels is meant for her. But then, none of her classes feel as if they are for her, none thrill her in the way was hoping for when she first enrolled at Whitehall.

There are subjects she enjoys, and subjects she _should_ enjoy but doesn’t. History, for instance, is mainly just reading, broken down it is a series of stories, and she has taken to stories like a fish to water since she was a child.

And yet she feels too wise and world-weary for each and every history course. History is inherently dishonest—the only one who gets to tell the story is the one who lives.

She is unable to unknow this, and so reads word after word about the dead, written by the living, and is reminded of word after word written by reporters about her younger brothers (missing, each day unfound diminishes the likelihood of them still breathing—she has heard this said gently, from detectives, and callously, from those who view scandal as profit, on a screen).

The last page is full of geometric shapes, an assignment from her art class last semester that was due in its first week: two and three-dimensional, tedious lead shading covering the white.

Finally, the sun dips below the clouds enough that she can free her hand (her tortoiseshell sunglasses are, she knows, somewhere at the bottom of her rucksack, but she does not rummage in public—anytime a heroine behind a romance cover does, she is prone to hysterical laughter…her respective grandmothers never let her so much as fidget out of doors, so the idea of taking items out onto the stone surface of this bench is alien to her).

It is then that the sky has dimmed enough for her to risk a glance; it is then that her gaze is pulled from the expanse of it to a rustling nearby: two men emerging from the Erasmus Rose Garden Maze, separated from her only by a slender, winding cement path and a few yards of grass, give or take.

They are mid-conversation, although she is not quite close enough to make out the words.

One man, with unkempt brown hair past his ears, brushes off the sleeve of his suit jacket as the other (taller, older) speaks.

The older man puts his hand on the shoulder of the younger. The younger slowly turns his head to the touched shoulder, looking at the other’s hand as if it were an exotic zoo animal.

Gingerly, the older man extracts his hand from its grip.

The younger continues to listen from there with what appears to be mild interest, interjecting rarely.

He’s not…handsome, exactly, and yet she finds she can’t stop staring.

 _Definitely not_ , she thinks, making a quick yet unexaggerated outline of his nose next to other angular shapes on the page, _poor thing_.

Appearance-wise, he fits nothing in the leading man checklist besides high cheekbones ( _there is no official one_ , per say, but every male costar her mother has appeared with fits it to a tee): he is not tall, has slight shoulders rather than broad...the only broad thing about him appears to be his mouth, built of thin lips, _so there, too, is a loss._

And yet…there _is_ a presence about him. It’s dissimilar to the golden exuberance that radiates from her father and so many of Hollywood’s elite, it’s…cooler.

Not golden, but silvery: as if he knows a secret that no one else is in on.

The ringing startles her—she actually slides her hand over for the slippery top of her rucksack (she has a cellular device, for emergencies, that she rarely takes with her due to its weight) and then withdraws when she sees the older of the two point to his phone, presumably asking for the excuses of the other based on his apologetic expression.

Now that he is alone, he pushes his sleeve up and over a thin wrist, looking down at his watch.

A few students mill around on the path now, one cyclist whizzes by, but it is not enough to quite obscure him, looking up from his watch, and quite squarely at her between them all.

* * *

One is never given the date their life will change on the morning of. In hindsight, years later, Elizabeth York will look upon this day and laugh.

But on this day Elizabeth is _not_ laughing, and all she knows is that she is furious (although she cannot quite put her finger on the pulse of why, all she knows is the emotion—perhaps she does not like being discerned so openly, perhaps when it is a snuck glance she can push it away more easily, perhaps _he_ is just her limit—hundreds more than he have looked at her from across a room or path before this day, tragedy and wealth and beauty combined attract more stares than the _Mona Lisa_ , but for some reason on _this_ day _it is too, too much_ ) enough that she folds her sketchpad in half so hard that the cardboard back crunches. She puts it at the top of everything else in her rucksack before snapping its button shut and sliding it over her shoulders.

She walks so quickly that it feels like flying (but maybe that is the adrenaline, thrumming against her temples like a bassline), the people walking on the path between buildings mere spots of color until she lands in front of him.

“Hello—”

“Why are you looking at me?”

Somehow, not having to look up at him (he is an inch taller than she at most) does not make the confrontation less intimidating; she has to dig half-moons into her palm to prevent herself from running scared before his answer.

“Because,” he says slowly, voice level as his sharp blue gaze, no softer behind lightweight wire rims ( _you miss nothing_ , she thinks, the thought a watery whisper…whether it is the cause or the effect of the shiver that runs through her is uncertain, but it reminds her of her mother’s wild tales of their supposed river goddess ancestry), “you…walked towards me with some purpose.”

“No, I mean—before I—before. Why were you—”

“Because _you_ were looking at me.”

The response is disarming; and given so quickly, without a trace of either arrogance or premeditation, that she knows it can’t be anything other than true.

Elizabeth finds herself turning her head so that her chin is almost level with her shoulder, if she sees the man he was speaking with earlier she can scurry back to her dorm and still congratulate herself for bravery, but he seems to have taken his phone conversation out of view.

Such is her luck… _of course_.

She turns back to face him, finding him very still.

“And?”

It is more imperious demand than question, delivered with her chin tilted upwards, slightly (for she knows all the words, although she has never had this conversation before: it is one she has had in her mind after every stare, one rehearsed in the safety of her bed after turning off the lamp, _and then I would’ve said, and **then** I would’ve_ …)

“And…?”

His accent is familiar to her from prep school (there were usually at least two British transfer students in each grade), although not identical to what she’s heard before.

And it does not dissuade her from her course, she is sure he is still familiar to her despite a separation of international waters (although she does wonder, idly, what it is he’s doing at an American university):

“I look familiar,” she says impatiently, “yes?”

He tilts his head to the side, as if considering, [lips of his strangely low-set mouth (the divot from his nose to the top of it pronounced as a river cutting across land) pursed](https://78.media.tumblr.com/ee1cf6b6b74d6fe0e73b81cd6ebd1aec/tumblr_inline_ox9gexI2wO1v9el6j_400.gif), as she waits for him to admit recognition.

She who has always been defined by her relation to others—the daughter of a notoriously handsome politician and a woman who moves across movie screens like water, the sister to the missing York boys, niece of the millionaire artist—waits to be defined.

Expects to be defined, in fact—she’s numb to it, at this point. It happens so often that it doesn’t touch her surface, she can’t allow herself to think of how much it bothers her or she’ll give to screaming each and every time it occurs (she is here now confronting it head-on because she never has before, and had hoped that maybe knowing she had had the courage to do so at least _once_ will buoy her through the other times that she knows will come).

“A little,” he says, finally, nodding slightly, “I think I saw you…in a _Vogue_ , once? A few years ago.”

“You read _Vogue_?”

“No, it was—I picked it up while…”

“Waiting room?”

“No, I was… _it_ was… in a flat that wasn’t…mine.”

“A flat what? Surface?”

“An _apartment_ ,” he corrects; a spot of quiet laughter before he quickly frowns it away ( _mildly, slightly, levelly_ …she wonders, idly, if there is _anything_ he does with any degree of intensity).

_Oh._

“You were holding a white rose,” he says, inflection ticking upwards so much that it sounds more question than statement, “and you had a gap between your two front teeth.”

He points to his own teeth, whereas boys her age would use this verbal opportunity to put their hand near her mouth to demonstrate—she finds herself glad he didn’t; she would’ve hated him for it.

In fact, he has kept quite a respectful distance from her throughout the conversation—it was she who invaded his space first if anything, she recalls that he actually took a few steps back when she first came over here.

“I don’t see it anymore,” he continues, squinting.

“I got rid of it,” Elizabeth says flatly, adjusting the strap of her rucksack so that it is closer to her collarbone.

She sounds hostile even to herself, but he still asks, with what seems like genuine curiosity:

“Why?”

His own teeth are crooked, somewhere between dull and bright, probably coffee-stained.

 _Not handsome_ , she thinks, again, but _his smile is…interesting._

_Hard to earn._

“It wasn’t photogenic,” she says with a shrug.

“Nor is life,” he counters.

“I _know_.”

If it sounds defensive, it’s because she is.

She _does know_.

“Alright.”

The older man is within her view now, standing under the branches of a jacaranda tree, gusts of wind ripping the purple flowers and falling atop his head, one sticks to the end of the [antennae](https://phoneevolution.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/44/).

“Who were you talking to?” she asks boldly, no longer wanting to run, gesturing to the man ahead.

He furrows his brow and turns until (she assumes) he sees who she does before turning back:

“The college president.”

“And why is he talking to you?”

“I’m alumni, and he…wants something from me.”

“Money?”

“Perhaps,” he says, smirking.

“And you want him to think you have less than you do?”

“Now, what would you make you think that?”

“You’re wearing a suit that came out a few years ago with patches on the elbows,” she says, pointing to both (left and right) idly, “with sleeves long enough to cover a _very_ expensive watch that you only checked after he left.”

“ _Is_ it?” he asks, lifting his arm to tap on the face, brow furrowed, still smirking.

“It’s a [Tank _Américaine_](https://www.truefacet.com/guide/cartiers-popular-historic-watches/). I can tell by the gold, and the roman numerals. I recognize it because my dad bought it for himself last Christmas, when it was released.”

“Are you a magpie?” he asks, grinning, flicking his wrist so that it catches the sunlight in flashes of lit gold.

“Are _you_?”

“Well…I’m certainly not averse to shiny things. I just…don’t remember checking it since we spoke, except just now.”

“I assume you had it latched tightly and higher on your wrist when you were speaking with him. You loosened it after he got his phone call, so I saw it fall past your sleeve earlier.”

“Sherlock Holmes, I presume?”

“Elizabeth York,” she says, pushing a windswept handful of red-gold locks behind her ear, “and you may not.”

“Henry Tudor,” he replies easily, extending a hand, “and I shall do my best.”

 _It’s very Austenian_ , this handshake (she is more used to the cheek-kisses extended by American and foreign nobility at galas given by her parents, and presumptuous hugs and hand-squeezes from girls she hardly knows that are fans of one or both of her parents, and recognize her), and she notes during it that Henry Tudor is somehow impervious to the strength of the Santa Ana winds, that he neither cradles nor crushes her hand.

“It’s alright, I suppose…that he wants something from me,” Henry elucidates, shrugging, crossing his arms, “everyone wants something, after all. Perhaps I want something, too.”

“Like?”

“In exchange for money donated here?”

She nods.

“More technology available on campus, more tech-based classes…more technology-fluent professors.”

“‘Technology-fluent’? Like talking to refrigerators?”

“No. More like…talking to computers.”

“Do they talk back?”

“Not yet.”

“You think they _will_?” she asks, laughing.

Henry shrugs, smiling.

“You _do_ , don’t you?”

“I don’t rule it out. Communication has already changed due to technology, it can only do more so.”

“I don’t believe that. Some things can’t be replaced.”

“Not replaced, at first, but…supplemented. Can you think of anyone that you write to more often than you call? Truly?”

“[My mom.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5543693/chapters/14384767)”

He laughs.

“Is that amusing to you, for some reason?” she snaps, face warming.

“No, I just…laughed because I remember I did the same, when I was here.”

Elizabeth wonders if his mother knows he hides designer watches from wealthy men. It could be a gift from her, for all she knows.

“I thought boys lambasted each other for things like that.”

“Oh, they do. I was _very_ secretive about it. But I managed.”

_Written on a chilly California night, outside on concrete steps, by the light of a flashlight? Henry Tudor waiting for his roommate to fall asleep to move pen over a paper held up against the hard back of a textbook?_

_There are many possibilities, all fun to imagine_ , but her imagination is cut short when she sees the college president walking towards them.

“His phone call is done,” Elizabeth says, hoping she doesn’t sound too dejected.

Henry turns around to wave, then turns back to her:

“You _don’t_ believe me, though?”

“About…?”

“[Communication, evolving rapidly, technology the wave of its future](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5543693/chapters/14485495)?”

“No, but what does it matter?”

“Maybe I’d like to be believed,” he says wryly, pointedly pushing the Cartier watch back up his arm and clasping it before pushing his sleeve back over it, “by one who doubts me so much.”

She shrugs, holding both palms askance before clasping them.

 _Maybe we’d all like things we don’t have_ , is on the tip of her tongue when:

“Buy a [tech stock](http://articles.latimes.com/1999/dec/28/business/fi-48388).”

 _Don’t tell me what to do_ , is next, but he hands her a business card from his wallet and years of etiquette training make accepting it and reading it instinctive, a kneejerk reaction she can’t help.

“Which one, and why would I?”

“Any of them. Dell, EMC, Microsoft…and because if you lose any money, I will pay you back. That’s what the card is for.”

There is a light of recognition in the eyes of the college president as he approaches and she panics, easily visualizing what she has experienced too many times, the too-familiar reminder ( _Miss York, I am so sorry to hear that there are no developments in the case, please know you are in my family’s prayers…_ ) is finally enough to erode trained etiquette:

“Bye!”

And she runs, on legs trained at horseback riding and buoyed by glittering Plantagenet genes, smoothly as the scales of Melusine’s tail, faster than she ever has before.

* * *

By the time she reaches the safety of the other side of her door, the card is crushed like a flower in her sweaty palm.

It remains legible despite the wear and tear.

She considers throwing it in her trash bin, but ends up shoving it into a drawer on her desk instead.

* * *

Later that night, she will dream that the card is pulsing, lit with a silvery glow that shines even through the cherrywood lines.


	2. blue

**February 11, 1990 (five days after)**

“I hate this place…it’s like voluntarily buying a ticket to your own nightmare.”

“You’ve always secretly wanted to go and would never go alone, I know this for a _fact_ —”

“It’s my _birthday_ , Tom!”

“Which is why I paid, and am buying you breakfast as soon as we leave, but look…”

Elizabeth does look, despite herself, to where her elder half-brother points: [the wax figure of Elvis](http://www.seeing-stars.com/Images/Slides/HollywoodWaxMuseum-Elvis.jpg), intensively detailed down to the pouty lips and black leather jacket.

“Doesn’t he kind of look like your dad?”

“Oh my _God_!”

She _hates_ that he’s right. [The glossy dark hair](http://78.media.tumblr.com/d65290d1fe3059cc5c5f85802b3c0b45/tumblr_oqimkp8d1S1qb64kco1_250.gif), [the smaller eyes](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSzxWs41uHyBDKbC6XQqVD2-wOmqdWDSeNGDTTlIlpM754Upaz7), [the face that is on the doughy side](http://78.media.tumblr.com/91defe577f27909eb4db070b93c5ebc2/tumblr_ocfvqau5if1ve8a1so2_1280.jpg)…even the nose bears a resemblance.

“Yeah,” she admits, sighing and taking a picture with her [polaroid camera](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/2017_Polaroid_Supercolor_1000.jpg/220px-2017_Polaroid_Supercolor_1000.jpg) (Thomas’ gift, which he had said was a ‘two-parter’ in the car—he had not revealed the _delightful surprise_ of the second part until they had parallel parked in front of [Madame Tussaud’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Tussauds_Hollywood)).

“Are you going to send it to him?”

“No! He’d be mad,” she says, shaking the photo out till it dries, “at the comparison.”

“Who wouldn’t want to be compared to ‘the king’?”

“Someone that cries whenever his weight is mentioned.”

* * *

They study the figure of Marilyn Monroe together at the entrance. The statue is on a platform over rolling red velvet carpet, portraying the iconic scene from _The Seven Year Itch_.

“Aren’t you going to take a picture?”

“No…she makes me sad,” Elizabeth says, camera cradled in both hands.

“Why? Because she died young?”

“That in part...more because I think…everyone thought that they knew her, but no one really did.”

 _It is awfully lonely_ , she thinks, as her gaze catches on the shiny red of the lips, frozen forever in an expression of delight, _to not be known_.

Which is nothing she would say aloud, not to her brother, anyway. He has known worse things than loneliness.

They both share brothers missing, but his tragedy-meter ( _the misery Olympics_ , she thinks, wryly but ruefully) towers over hers: [his father died in service of his country when he was only six](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5543693/chapters/14349835), and [he served himself](http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/blog/posts/thomas-grey-marquis-of-dorset-elizabeth-woodvilles-oldest-son/) in Kuwait but never speaks of it. 

“You say weird things, sometimes, Bess.”

“ _Thank_ you,” she says smartly, prickling at his dismissive tone, wishing she had said nothing at all, “can we _go_ now? This place really does give me the creeps.”

“Yes, _princess_ …we can go.”

* * *

Thomas orders for her at the counter of the café (an orange-flavored Italian soda and an [almond croissant](http://boleynqueens.tumblr.com/post/157115150207/it-is-worth-noticing-that-hampton-court-was-a)) while she finds a table, finally settling on one by a window and draping her jacket along the back of a chair.

Hollywood Boulevard is [coated in fog on this chill morning](https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KLAX/1990/2/11/DailyHistory.html?req_city=&req_state=&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo=); the window steaming as she watches rivulets pass the other side of the glass despite the lack of rain. The fog descends like a grey mystery sliding over the bronze stars on the sidewalk, obscuring the pedestrians that walk along it.

"More coffee?"

Elizabeth turns her head from the window, fingertips still on the slick cool of it, towards the voice, the ribbons of an apron tied in a bow across the back of a waitress who faces a table a few rows away, blocking it from her sight.

A _yes, thank you_ from the unseen patron and the waitress leaves with a lighter pot, skirt swaying, revealing a table covered in newspaper pages and occupied by Henry Tudor, reading intently.

"Here's yours," Thomas says, sliding a paper bag over to her and setting her drink down with little ceremony, "you ready to go?"

"Soon," she says, looking over his shoulder, "I--"

"You told me you wanted it to-go, you said you had a test you had to study for tomorrow--"

"I do, I just…see someone I know, I'll be right back."

"Fine," he says, unwrapping his own paper bag, then under his breath, "less crumbs for the car, I guess…"

But she is no longer listening, smoothing any possible wayward wrinkles in her cashmere sweater down over her ribcage as she walks towards Henry.

She reaches the end of the table he sits at and thinks: _don't say 'small world'_. _If you say 'small world', you will hate yourself for a week at the very least._

"Hello," Elizabeth says, quietly; but he jumps in his seat anyways, hands sliding to grip the edge of the table, crinkling the paper underneath.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to disturb--"

"No, you didn't-- only in the technical sense, in that I was reading before and I'm now…not."

"May I sit?"

"Oh, of course! Let me help--"

"No," she says, pulling the opposite chair out before he's completely out of his own, "you're fine."

Henry sits back, folded hands atop the newspaper.

Elizabeth surveys the expanse of the table: coffee cup, glass of water, the Wall Street Journal, several colored highlighters and pens she hadn't noticed before off to the side.

"Are you _studying_?" she asks, absently rolling one under the pad of her index, letting it clack along the ceramic surface.

"In a way," he says, prying it back from under her grip by the end of its cap and tucking it into the pocket of his shirt, "yes."

He leans all the way back in his chair, watching her in a singular way she would be hard-pressed to describe if asked.

"Is your _date_ joining us?"

"What?"

"The man sitting ahead of us, that just waved to me?"

She turns to see Thomas, cheek bulging, waving behind her with one hand, a doughnut in the other. She scrunches her face and sticks her tongue out at him before turning back to Henry:

"That's my brother, and no, he's not."

"Oh," he says, shoulders visibly relaxing, lowering from where they were previously hunched, "good."

"'Good'?"

"Yes."

Henry picks up the coffee cup, not breaking her stare as he lifts it to drink.

"What does that mean?"

"I would think he was too old for you," he says, shrugging, "if he were, that's all."

Elizabeth is struck again by how very slight he is, with the shrug of those skinny shoulders-- he hardly fills the chair. So small he could almost be elfish, so reticent that he makes her push and ask more questions than she usually does in any given conversation.

 _Dad could throw him across a room_.

"He's ten years older than I am," she says, smiling, "but it doesn't matter if I date someone older."

"At your age, it does."

"At _'my age'_? I'm an adult."

"But you're young. It still matters."

"Ten years isn't that long."

"Ten years is _very_ long. I would venture that in ten years the world will look so different, you would hardly recognize it now."

"It doesn’t matter unless someone in the relationship is underage," she insists, "and besides, when does _that_ happen?"

He tilts his head to the side, watchful again, in a way that makes her believe he is waiting to be amused, or surprised.

"In the world on Appalachian hookups, perhaps," she continues, putting a hand to her chest, shaking her head, "but not _mine_."

"'Appalachian…hookups'?"

"You know…child brides, up in the…wherever. That's not--"

"I didn't know…there was such a cavalier term for…matters in which one party can't legally consent. Is that an American thing?"

"I don't-- it was just a joke, it's not--"

"A _joke_?"

Elizabeth has never seen anyone turn from affable to glacial this quickly: jaw set, tone of ice, eyes darkened to a raw blue. Her stomach churns at the sudden intensity, she backs up and the legs of her chair squeak in protest against the floor.

"Yes, a _joke_ \--"

"Please leave."

"Excuse me?"

"Please," he says, voice stilted and still managing to chill her utterly, one hand fisted over the coffee cup so tightly that the tendon bulges as he looks down at the paper below (not really focused on any particular part of it, she notices, gaze blank and bright as the bluish glow of a computer screen), "leave my table before I say something I…regret."

She complies quickly, flustered, her throat squeezing and tightening as she rushes past the table where Thomas still sits, grabbing her orders without saying a word.

* * *

Later that night, the television set in the lounge area of the sophomore girl's dorms is playing the news as she sits on the couch with her chemistry notes propped on her knees.

> _[As hundreds of people cheered, Nelson Mandela walked from the prison gates to freedom...](http://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/feb-11-1990-nelson-mandela-freed-prison-9395738) _

"Well, at least _someone_ had a good day," she says, snapping her notebook shut and getting up from her spot.

"Hey, isn't it your birthday?" asks a girl whose name she can't remember.

"No."

* * *

Elizabeth finds a copy of Sylvia Plath's published journals, wedged in between two different sections with its cover down on a shelf at the Whitehall Library.

Something turns, shifting in her as she reads each word.

When she gets to a passage where Plath tells herself to stop wallowing, she shuts it definitively and decides not to, either.

* * *

It is perhaps the result of feeling small, and not wishing to dwell in it, as well, but she focuses on her schoolwork with more vigor than she has since enrollment. She _'applies herself'_ , to use the phrase oft-used by her father that she hates-- well, he _and_ fathers everywhere, according to late-night chats with other girls in her dorm building.

To her, it still all feels pointless, but she does it nevertheless. To stay busy helps build herself up, to stay busy is to forget things and feelings she wishes not to remember, to stay busy is to chalk her time with Henry Tudor up to an awkward footnote, an unsightly blip in an otherwise unblemished life.

She spends so many hours and days studying at the library, often coming to her dorm only once it's closed for the night. Her dorm-mate, [Joan Vaux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Vaux_\(lady-in-waiting\)), leaves notecard after candy-colored notecard on her desk of messages: missed calls on her landline from her mother, father, sisters.

* * *

There is one notecard that is taped to the surface of her desk, in which Elizabeth has written, in flowing cursive and underlined:

> _**Sell stocks!** _

(She bought all three he named, $100 for each.)

It is the one thing she has set out to do since her birthday that she has somehow…been unable to.

* * *

Elizabeth even goes to a job fair that's hosted in the student center (not that she _needs_ income, really, but…she thinks it might be nice to be able to ask her parents for money less), picking up a few pamphlets. Little there interests her, though: she has no desire for an office job, preferring something where she can walk around and be outside more, soak up the sunlight she has always craved.

Thomas, who works as a script-reader in a Hollywood office, lets her know of a movie shooting this summer hiring PA's when Elizabeth lets him know of her job search.

He gets her an interview slot, and she goes.

She does not drop her mother's name during it.

The week after the interview she studies in her dorm exclusively, watching her phone intently.

* * *

They hire her, and while she may not be ecstatic, she is certainly proud.

* * *

The script for the movie, she had learned, was adapted from a play.

After a fruitless search for the book of it at the information desk at both the college and public libraries, she bikes to the nearest Barnes & Noble one Saturday afternoon, teeming with energy and hope. 

* * *

After buying the book, Elizabeth wanders towards the magazine section with it slung over her shoulder in a plastic bag. An astrology periodical grabs her attention, and she pages through it until she finds hers: Aquarius.

There is a drawing in the right-hand corner of the page of a woman holding a jug of water at her waist, with the caption “The Water Bearer”. She makes a mental note to tell her mother, who looks for signs of Melusine everywhere she goes.

“There you are! Oh, this is _wonderful_.”

The exclamation sounds so much like the voice of Judi Dench that Elizabeth looks up from her magazine and circles around, looking for a possible television set, wondering if Barnes & Noble now sells videotapes in addition to CD’s.

Finding none, she shrugs and returns to her horoscope section:

> _"[While Aquarian influence can make us rebellious and detached from reality (c’mon back to earth!), it helps us see possibilities we wouldn’t otherwise….](http://astrostyle.com/aquarius-horoscope/)"_

“It’s not that big a deal, Mum.”

_No. Fucking. Way._

Elizabeth closes the magazine slowly, meandering towards the exit doors.

_What cosmic joke has the universe aligned that I keep running into—_

“It _is_ a big deal, Henry, and I am buying every single copy—”

“I’m hardly even a footnote, it’s really not necessary.”

She doesn’t need to see, she knows it’s him, and yet feels compelled beyond reason to look over her shoulder, like Eurydice and Lot’s wife before her, to confirm that it _is_ him:

Henry Tudor stands near the racks of glossy publications, holding the right side of an open magazine, alongside a thin and upright woman who is a head shorter than him.

A head shorter, but not much more than a decade older.  

* * *

She doesn’t realize that she left the store without paying for the Astrology magazine until she’s halfway to campus.

Elizabeth supposes, as she unravels the lock and chain from her backpack at the bike rack nearest her dorm, that she can add it along to her list of sins:

  * _mocks young teen mothers to the son of one_
  * _shoplifts_



* * *

**May 1990**

Elizabeth realizes (when it is too late to fix…hopefully _it is not too late to fix what she is here to do_ ) that her hair is longer than [her dress ](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/12/f9/66/12f966352d9a778d3de56d50ca7053be--s-fashion-fashion-photo.jpg)only after sitting down at the bus-stop bench adjacent to Sunset & Vine.

The firelit gold spills down the tops of her thighs, past the tiered hem of the skirt.

_It’s less embarrassing than a foot in the mouth, at least._

The thought propels her forward, she hooks the strap of her purse further along her shoulder till it hits her collarbone as she walks staunchly towards the swinging turnstile doors of the Capitol Records building.

* * *

Somehow she finds herself unable to actually make it through the doors, but luckily there are benches near the entrance there, too, lined with potted trees.

_I will take deep breaths for five minutes, and then I will go in._

* * *

Five minutes turns into an hour.

She sits with her eyes closed, in the shade of a small tree, imagining walking through the doors, imagining taking the elevator, walking to Office 24A (according to his business card, packed and tucked among the rows of credit cards in her wallet)…

“Elizabeth?”

She opens one eye:

“Yes?”

And then both:

Henry stands over her, record in hand, black and white as the rest of his appearance ( _er…suit_ ).

There’s a picture [of an open eye on it ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/03/La%27s_.jpg)( _the cosmic joke continues, it seems_ ), a print of a photo as charcoal as the rims of his glasses.

“Did a stock lose money? Come to say ‘I told you so’ in person?”

It is teasing, his lips tip upwards in a smile, his eyes crinkle within the frames, magnified underneath the lenses. 

“No,” she says, tugging the hem of her dress down with both hands till it is taut, “I came to…talk.”

“Oh?”

“To…you.”

“Alright.”

He stands, drumming the album cover with his fingers as she sits, silently, her tongue feeling like lead in her mouth.

“I…was about to grab a coffee,” he says, finally, using the square object to gesture to the crosswalk to the left of them.

“ _Oh._ ”

“Would you like to talk to me…there?”

“Oh! Um…yes, sure.”

* * *

The reason for the carried album becomes clear to her as she watches Henry hand it over the counter to one of the café’s employees, a girl with short hair who takes it seamlessly, placing it on a record-player in the roped-off area without a word.

He brings over two styrofoam cups filled to the brim, carefully setting hers (tea) down first.

“Who sings [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu2iv-vMKT8)?” she asks, toying with the string of the teabag.

“The La’s.”

“Oh.”

“Advance edition.”

“Right—you work…right.”

“A perk.”

He drinks slowly, hand clasped so that she can see the blue veins. 

They remind her of the blue fury of his eyes months ago.

“Did you not see me?”

“Did I not see you…when?” he asks, brow furrowed as he sets his cup down carefully on the plated glass.

The corners of the table are sharp, she knows, from rubbing one nervously with her palm.

“At the bookstore.”

“At the… _oh_. No, I didn’t.”

“Oh.”

“But you…saw _me_ ,” he says, carefully, nodding and smiling somewhat ruefully ( _as if it all adds up now_ ), “and my mother?”

“Yes. I mean I figured it was…a sign.”

“A sign?”

“Well, yes. I mean, I don’t know how long you’ve lived here, consecutively—”

“A few months, but what does that—”

“But I’ve never seen you before, I mean, before this year, and I figure if we keep running into each other it must…be a sign, for me to apologize.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Elizabeth—”

“No, I must, because you can say ‘it’s a small world’ but if _that’s_ true it’s _also_ true that I _somehow_ never run into Madonna, and yet I _always_ run into—"

“Madonna?”

“Yes!”

She sips her earl grey, notices her knees shaking, putting one hand on the right to steady it.

“You never run into…the Virgin Mary?”

“The—no! _Madonna_!”

“Oh! _That_ ,” he says, doing the most robotic [Vogue hands](https://media.giphy.com/media/102pkHXAmsSFaw/giphy.gif) she’s ever seen around his face, “Madonna, yes?”

“Yes…and, _wow_ ,” she laughs, covering her hand with her mouth, "oh my _God_?"

Henry laughs too, index and middle fingers paired and pointed at the bridge of his nose, eyes squinted closed as his shoulders shake, legs crossed, back half-hanging off the back of the chair.

* * *

 Eventually the giggles over the _voguing_ incident subside on both sides of the table.

It is as he leans back, wiping spilled coffee with a napkin, that she leans forward, hands clasped, head lowered:

“I am… _truly_ sorry, though.”

“No, I shouldn’t have been angry with you over it. It’s just a…sore spot, but you had no way of--”

“I didn’t know—”

“I know you didn’t, you couldn’t have.”

“It was…stupid,” she says, fiddling with the ruffled end of her sleeve, “I just…wanted to be clever.”

“Well, don’t we all.”

“I wanted to…”

Elizabeth looks heavenwards, towards the flat ceiling, cracked in the corners and yellowing with age.

“…impress you. I wanted you to like me, I guess.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“O _kay_ ,” she says, chest tightening, the accusation snagging on something tender within, “well, I did, so—”

“No, I just mean you don’t—need me to.”

He frowns, arms crossed, a hand over each spindly elbow.

“Well, sure, no one _needs_ —”

“I already… do.”

There, spilling over the tops of decidedly exquisite cheekbones: a blush of pink, only half hidden by the tips of brown hair.

An admittance, a confession: it surprises but does not displease her, and she finds herself blushing as well.

* * *

It is the same dream from months ago that night, except her drawer is emanating doubly silver light.

This time it swirls around in tendrils like a vine, intertwining with the glory of her hair, pouring into her heart.

* * *

Scrawled on the back of his business card now is his landline number (she had asked for it, he had given it very hesitantly: it is there, in boxy rectangular numbers, in slanted handwriting, in blue ink darker than the color of his eyes).

 _Is it hard?_ (Elizabeth asked, fixating on the family photo he had shown her: him and his mother, the only picture in his wallet)

 _No_ , Henry answered, _no harder than life. No softer, either. People usually ask if she’s my older sister, and we just…expect it. Prepare for it._

_So I caught you off-guard?_

_So you caught me off-guard._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the ages are...interesting? she's supposed to be nineteen after her birthday, and i think i goofed it a bit with whitehall uni, so i might have to edit to make it match up. 
> 
> anyway! hope you let me know what you think so far, i'm excited about where this is going! thanks for reading <3


	3. venus

**May 7, 1990**

“Sunshine.”

“That’s _so_ cute…I didn’t know you felt that way about me, Henry.”

A sigh of exasperation, the little _tch_ sound he is wont to make, the one that sounds as if it is from the back of the throat, and then:

“If you’re not going to play the game, I’m hanging up.”

“ _So_ sensitive—”

“What you characterize as sensitivity is actually just a dedication to rules.”

“Sure,” Elizabeth says, blowing a stream of air onto a row of freshly painted nails, cradling her phone against her ear with the opposite shoulder, “whatever you—”

“A world without rules is anarchy.”

“Which you do not support, I assume?”

“Which I do not support…mainly because I look terrible with a beard.”

“Explain to me how those two things are related?”

“Limited access to razors, of course.”

“Huh…”

Her bedroom is dark, save for a swath of moonlight that has fallen over the bed she now sits at the head of, cross-legged. The shrill ringing of her phone had begun around ten o’clock, and had tilted her from the serene, trance-like state of magazine-reading and nail-polishing to one of butterflies.

It seems her wit is still in that trance, as it takes her a few beats to finish the thought:

“I had no idea you were so vain.”

“ _Exceedingly_ vain. I comb my hair at least a minute, every day.”

“Now, that _is_ surprising.”

“Goodbye—”

“No, wait: rain!”

“Is that your turn?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Sunshine…rain?”

“Yes.”

“Wales.”

The word association game had been his idea: or, it had been a few phone conversations ago.

 _Where we left off then, shall we?_ was the question he yielded after an exchange of greetings. Soon after was a cordially vocalized hope that he hadn’t woken her (this, she scoffed at) and teasing on both ends:

> _Alone, at home, on a Friday night?_
> 
> _And where are you exactly, Henry?_
> 
> _At a payphone booth._
> 
> _Why?_
> 
> _I don’t call you from my work phone—it wouldn’t be appropriate._
> 
> _You’re still at work?_
> 
> _That much follows._
> 
> _It’s late, what if you get mugged?_
> 
> _Mugging is no more likely to happen late at night than it is during the day._
> 
> _Yes, and I’m sure if you shared that statistic with any criminal they would stop straightaway…_

The game is much of what they’ve been doing, in the little bursts of free time each has between work and college and responsibilities.

Except it is Friday night and Joan left for a party an hour ago, and she is hopeful it might be longer than a burst this time.

“England,” she says.

“ _Tch_ …imperialism.”

“India.”  

“Hinduism.”

“God.”

“Son.”

“You lose, you already said—"

“I do not ‘lose’…s-o-n, not s-u-n. As is ‘son of God.’”

“Fine…Father.”

“Dead.”

The phone slips off her shoulder, falling with a soft thud onto the mattress. She picks it up, quickly, sitting upright rather than leaning against the pillows set against the wall, panicked that he will think her rude.

“Elizabeth, are you still—”

“Yes, I lost grip of it for a second, I’m sorry—”

“It’s alright, I thought maybe the connection dropped—”

“No, that wasn’t what I meant, I meant: I’m _sorry_.”

“That’s…two words.”

“This is not _word association_ anymore, you just told me…”

He is not picking up her words where she has left them.

The seconds drag on, blooming like a bruise as she hears only air on the other line. To be left hanging is a feeling that weighs on her like a brick; she feels as if she is on the other side of a closed door, waiting.  

Elizabeth imagines him on the other side of a glass door, inside a booth on a sidewalk _._

_Is his jacket buttoned up to his neck to protect against the night chill? Is the earphone pressed against the high curve of his cheekbone, is he waiting for her to say something, is his other hand in his pocket—_

“Are you _asking_ me if my father is dead or telling me?” he asks very curtly, cutting across her thoughts.

“Didn’t you already tell me?”

“Not…intentionally.”

Of course, one of the most important components of the game is honesty, and another speed: to say the first word that pops into one’s head after saying the previous, without thinking.

“Okay, so: I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

* * *

“Because it’s _sad_ ,” Elizabeth says, in a tone that brooks no argument.

Her voice is made softer over a phone line; it makes him sigh despite himself, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

“Whether or not it’s sad is…entirely dependent upon who you ask.”

Henry thinks of his mother, scared and alone and thirteen years old, with an open Bible in her hands.

He tilts his head upwards even though he knows there are no stars in the sky from here, not from these city streets (after years he has discovered that to view them one must to drive up to Runyon Canyon, or the Griffith Park Observatory): the only thing visible from the glass ceiling of the booth is a block of smudged black sky, trapped by smog and framed by arching branches covered in jacaranda blossoms.

“And if I were to ask you?”

“If you were to ask me, I would decline to answer.”

“And why is that?”

She is not whispering, and has not since this conversation’s beginning, so he imagines she is alone.

Alone, with one leg crossed over the other, in a room he has never seen. Toying with a shining rope of honeyed red, perhaps, as she yields questions to a cryptic man.

A cryptic man who has dreamt of falling leaves of red, orange, and gold for months. How strange, he thinks, to dream of autumn in a land devoid of season. How strange to wake up with a crisp, cold, and clear feeling in one’s chest, even as the air outside is warm and hazy.  

“Because if I told you what I thought of his death, you would think less of me for it.”

“You can’t know what I’d think—”

“Or you would want further explanation, and that would require me to tell you a story that is not mine…wait a moment.”

He puts the phone down on its neck so that it looks like it’s a smile, atop the black chrome rectangle, as he pushes quarters from his pocket into the coin slot.

As he picks it back up he can hear her talking still, muffled until he brings it back to his ear:

“…do you mean, that is ‘not yours’?”

“That is not mine to tell.”

* * *

“What if I promise not to ask for further explanation?” she asks, lying flat on her back, two pillows propped underneath her head.

“Then I would hold you to that, until I was prepared to give any.”

“Then I promise.”

“Then go ahead.”

It is very intimate, this, she thinks, for the simplest reasons: the earpiece wedged against the crook of her neck, her mouth so close to the speaker that it brushes against it as she speaks.

His voice, right here, in the empty space of her bed.

“Henry Tudor, for the record: what do you think of your father’s death?”

“I think…better him than me.”

* * *

  **May 18, 1990**

“Hey, the line to the phone in the lounge is _super_ long, is it okay if I use yours? My mom asked me to call her tonight,” Joan asks, half-in and half-out of their door-frame.

“Sure,” Elizabeth says, returning to the page of the textbook in front of her (the question had been yielded when she was mid-sentence, and she has to go back, unable to remember how it began).

Joan comes into the room, shutting the door behind her, before making her way over to Elizabeth’s desk and taking a seat, picking the phone up from its cradle.

Elizabeth reaches over to open the top drawer, her hand closing over her cellular on impulse. She gets up from her bed, indicating that it's open and available as Joan waits for the ringing to end, and leaves the dorm with bare feet, closing the door gently behind her.

The number she intends to call is memorized, although she has never dialed it before. She punches it in, hands shaky as she leans her back against the wall of the hall, betting on his late hours at the office being the status quo for him.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice, sweet and high-pitched as a child star’s.

“Hello? Who’s this?” Elizabeth asks, clenching her grip on the cell phone.

“Who’s _this_?” she counters.

“This…[this a prank call, goodbye](https://yarn.co/yarn-clip/18e3db46-ba79-446c-b0b7-798b63c00b95),” she blurts, digging her thumb on the end button with a spurt of adrenaline.

She presses the phone, ear and mouthpiece down, against her clavicle, panting.

* * *

Elizabeth files the incident away, the embarrassment of it, so forcefully that she all but forgets about it…that, or perhaps it is merely that the hectic schedule of studying for final exams has crammed it right out of her mind.

In any case, she thinks of it only that night, and not in the weeks after.

When her landline rings she picks it up emotionlessly (Henry’s calls have receded since she told him her exam schedule) and with little expectation, she does not even close the notebook open on her lap, filled to the brim with lecture notes:

“Yes?”

“Is _that_ how you answer the phone?”

“Dad! Hi, how are—”

“Why is there a charge on your cell phone bill?”

“I’m not…sure—”

“A Los Angeles number? That phone is for _emergencies_ , Bess.”

“I was…drunk?”

Somehow that seems less embarrassing than the truth. Being reminded of it has caused the hot, prickly feeling of discomfort in that hallway to return; she gnaws her lower lip and hopes the confrontation will be over soon.

“You were _what_?”

“I was, uh…drunk, at a club with friends and…couldn’t drive, so I called a cab. That’s why it’s an LA number.”

“ _Oh_.”

Edward York’s tone relaxes and his bluster ebbs away, as it usually does (especially concerning his eldest). It morphs into pride for her doing the ‘responsible thing’; then to concern:

_Your mother would kill me if she found out, do you think she trusts cab drivers anymore? Now that I think on it, perhaps I don’t either…_

The concern eventually leads him to a decision that he arrives at with little help from her (she gives the conversational equivalents of nods—an _mm-hmm_ here, a _yes, dad_ there…): to hire a vetted car service for the next time this occurs, in advance.

He insists she give him a date, so she gives him the day of her last exam.

* * *

  **June 7, 1990**

“When are you leaving the office tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure, why?”

“Leave…before midnight.”

“Why?”

“It’s…a surprise,” Elizabeth says, setting the phone down on her bedspread so that she can rip a pore strip off her nose with both hands.

> _I hate surprises..._  

The words sound muffled and far away, like from a tunnel’s end as she throws the used piece of skincare into her wastebasket.

She picks the phone back up, settling back onto her bed with a bounce:

“Do you hate _me_?”

“ _Tch_ …you know I don’t.”

“Then do it.”

“I’m not—"

“Don’t argue with me. I have an exam tomorrow—”

“Elizabeth—”

“I have an exam tomorrow, and I start my job almost immediately after that, and I need something to look forward to or I won’t be able to get through it—”

“I like to be prepared—"

“I don’t have time to tell you, I don’t have time to convince you to go, and I don’t have time to argue with you. So please just be there—”

“This is—”

“And you can decide when and where to go the time next. Goodbye.”

* * *

**  
June 8, 1990**

Her dress is as short as it was the last time she arrived at Capitol Records, but this time it is by design rather than mistake.

Incidentally, this time she feels at least ten times more powerful and confident than the time last. Sitting in the back of a Lincoln town car rather than a sidewalk bench will cause that increase, and she’s sure hours of phone calls don’t hurt, either.

She rolls her window down as soon as she sees him, standing at the corner of the street near the stoplights underneath the copper pods.

Henry is looking down at his watch, briefcase slung over his shoulder, when she calls his name, arms folded on the windowsill.

He walks over the small distance, knuckles braced over the top handle of the case.

“Are you getting out of the car?” he asks.

“A _lady_ never does so alone,” she says primly.

“Is that your way of asking me to open the…”

Her driver Tómas has already shut the door, making his way to the other side of the car. He tips his hat to Henry before opening hers, and she slides over to the other side.

He settles in, sliding his briefcase over his lap. The side with the handle faces her, combination locks running on each side of it.

“I thought only lawyers had these,” she remarks, touching one of the dials briefly before drawing her hand back

“Lawyers and other sharks.”

“You don’t _look_ like a shark,” she says, leaning her head back, turned to look at him over her shoulder.

“Do I look _soft_?” he asks, mirroring her positioning.

 _No_ , he is all angles indeed: the knees, the elbows, the ends of black penny loafers (which are, _hysterically_ , stuffed with silver rather than copper coins—she wonders if he knows of their origin in the American recession), the briefcase, the svelte shoulders, even the corners of his square-framed glasses.

Even his eyes remind her of sharp things only: the jagged edges of glaciers, the sparkling pale rocks within a geode, a summer sky so bright it hurts to see, a winter sky so crisp it hurts to breathe.

“No,” she admits, shrugging, “are those the only two options?”

“It depends on the…”

He takes her in very quickly before looking away, which is much less than she had hoped for. The entirety of her ensemble took hours to plan.

“It depends on what?”

“The…circumstances,” he says, looking at the black window of the partition separating them from the front seats, then down, “also you look…nice.”

“Thank—”

“I didn’t know what to wear, because you wouldn’t tell me where we were going,” he interrupts, tugging on the cuff of his sleeve, “so hopefully this is alright.”

“It’s fine,” she says, surveying his outfit (a pearly grey button down and blue tie paired with darker grey pants), “maybe lose the tie, though?”

He shoots her a withering glance.

“There’s no need to look at me like that,” she says testily, in imitation of her mother’s trademark frost, “I said ‘lose the tie’, not ‘streak down Hollywood Boulevard’—”

“I’m doing it,” Henry says, equally testily, pulling it down.

She watches intently as he pulls it loose, slipping it over his shoulders till it is looped in a puddle as blue as an inkblot in his palm.

“May I see it?”

“ _Why_?” he asks, pulling the hand with the tie back from her reach, over the other side of his torso nearest the back door.

“I’m not going to _steal it_ —what, you don’t trust me?” she asks sunnily, palm over her heart.

“ _No_ ,” Henry says, with a speed she considers insulting; but releasing the tie, letting it pool onto the white fabric stretched across her lap.

“Unbelievable,” she exclaims, holding the kite-shaped end of it in one hand, “I trust _you_!”

“You _shouldn’t_ ,” he says, canting his head on the last word before sitting upright again, loosening the top button of his shirt.

“Why,” Elizabeth asks, unwinding the tie between both hands, “are you so especially evil?”

“No…you shouldn’t trust anyone you’ve known only a season. It’s unwise.”

“Fine.”

“You need not take it personally—I trust very few.”

She frowns at the tie, holding a piece of it taut and very close to her face, as if she were about to blindfold herself.

It is such an impossibly silky blue; and she cannot find a designer tag anywhere.

An impossibly silky tie, reluctantly given to her by someone she considers an impossible man: she can see no way to tell [him the story the tie and the Lincoln town car combined reminds her of](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5543693/chapters/14349835), no organic way to bring it up in the sequence of this conversation…

“Although I think even if I were a man of average trust, I would have…had my doubts, concerning you.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, looking up and turning in her seat to look at him.

“I mean…when the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen walks up to you, you’re bound to wonder if you’re being scammed.”

“Scammed _how_?”

Henry said the first part so breezily that it is a wonder to her. It was said in a tone far more relaxed than his ‘ _you look nice’:_

 _‘Nor is life’_ and _‘Mugging is no more likely to happen at night’_ and _‘the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen’…_ all were delivered in the exact same, matter-of-fact manner, and somehow Elizabeth finds this _infuriating_.

“I don’t know,” he says, laughing, “that she lost a bet and has to talk to…the first bloke she sees wearing ‘patches on the elbows’, or perhaps that she’s a Russian spy—"

“You did _not_ think I was a _Russian spy_ —”

“Of course I did! Why do you think I told you to buy stocks?”

“You are so full of—”

“It was a test! A _real_ Russian spy would never buy American stocks—”

“You did not!” she insists.

“—would never support the evils of capitalism with that level of commitment or investment—"

“She _might_ …to protect her cover,” she says coyly, tapping the end of her snub nose with her index.

“ _[да](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8LKeQb8t-E)_?”

“You didn’t _really_ think that, though.”

“No, not when we first spoke,” he admits, “but…I did wonder if you might be one afterwards.”

“You read too many novels, then.”

“Wrong, I read very few novels. I rarely have the time. It just seemed so unlikely that I found myself inventing explanations.”

His briefcase is no longer on his lap—she sees the end of it sticking squarely out of a pocket on the partition, protected by padded material.

They are stuck in traffic downtown, inching along. Rain sluices across the windows, illuminated by the streetlights, bars and clubs they pass. His face is lit with them as he leans the back of his head against the window on his side, rendering it eerie in appearance.

“It’s bullshit,” she says finally, “what, you’d trust me more if I was uglier?”

“Not ‘uglier’, per say,” he says, stroking his lower lip with two fingers as he speaks ( _how did_ she _ever think them thin_ , she wonders now…they appear as soft and red as the petals of a summer rose), “just…less incandescent, perhaps.”

“‘Incandescent’? What am I, a lit candle?”

“More like a star.”

“A star?” she asks, shoulders shaking with laughter, incredulous.

“Yes…I’m surprised you don’t burn right through,” he says, sweeping a hand over the unoccupied lather seat between them, “this upholstery.”

“Did I burn you?”

He holds his hands out, palms facing his chest, then outward and back again, making an act of examination whilst smirking until he turns to her and says:

“Not yet.”

The town car has stopped at a red light. There are rows of cars ahead and rows behind them.

Elizabeth moves down the row of seats till she sits alongside him. The half of the tie trails out behind her, [a prop for a story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5543693/chapters/14349835) she has yet to tell.

She weaves her right hand in his left, still held upward in the air in play, palm facing her. It is something she does slowly as he stares openly at her: her index in the gap between his first and second, then like and like and like, leaving the thumb for last before her hand is in his.

He continues to stare as she pulls their held hands down to the seat.

“What about now?” she asks, so close that her hair falls like a sheet over his shoulder.

“You tell me.”

His hand is cold, actually, but: there is what she might refer to as a blossom of warmth in the middle of its palm.

“I’m not a star,” she whispers.

“A planet, then, if you prefer.”

“Which one?”

“Venus, of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> elizabeth of york had a footman named thomas, but since thomas grey was her brother in another chapter...i decided to make him her icelandic driver for this: hence, Tómas.
> 
> i wasn't planning on doing any scenes from henry's perspective until the very very last chapter, but...it seemed to be the only way to unstick that particular scene whilst writing so...hopefully it still works? *fingers crossed*
> 
> my first reference to 'i pray to venus of good continuance' in this prequel, and one of the first to the fanmix i made on this story for tumblr...which is the lyrics to train's drops of jupiter: 'and tell me, did venus blow your mind...'
> 
> the 'this is a prank call, bye' is a gem i cannot claim-- from the wonderful show 'broad city', so i linked it.
> 
> next chapter should be a continuance of the last scene, and more scenes from the summer ahead of them. hope everyone's enjoying so far! <3

**Author's Note:**

> moodboard [here](http://boleynqueens.tumblr.com/post/165691530162/there-is-a-presence-about-him-its-dissimilar-to)


End file.
